WASHINGTON — The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act is the first major update to environmental legislation in two decades, overhauling the process for regulating toxic chemicals, allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to ban substances like asbestos, and limiting the secrecy around those chemicals after 10 years,

But that's not the only reason why President Obama chose to sign the bill Wednesday in a public ceremony at the White House: It's also a rare example of bipartisanship from a Congress widely seen as unable to agree on much of anything.

President Barack Obama could leave office with the most aggressive, far-reaching environmental legacy of any previous occupant of the White House. Yet it is very likely that not a single major environmental law will have passed during his two terms in Washington.

In an historic action that will protect people's health and the environment, and benefit riverfront communities, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to remove 4.3 million cubic yards of highly contaminated sediment from the lower eight miles of the Passaic River in New Jersey. The sediment in the Passaic River is severely contaminated with dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), heavy metals, pesticides and other contaminants from more than a century of industrial activity.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) efforts to regulate greenhouse gases have been under attack ever since the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court ruling that confirmed its authority to do so. In 2010, just before efforts to pass a cap-and-trade climate bill were abandoned in the Senate, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski sponsored failed legislation to nullify the Supreme Court decision and block EPA from moving forward with greenhouse gas regulations. Attempts to undermine EPA’s regulatory authority were once again thwarted last month when the U.S.

A 26 June ruling by a United States federal court has upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) first-ever regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards. The move clears the way for the federal environmental agency to move forward with broader implementation of GHG regulation across the US.

A report released today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the benefits of reducing fine particle and ground level ozone pollution under the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments will reach approximately $2 trillion in 2020 while saving 230,000 people from early death in that year alone. The report studied the effects of the Clean Air Act updates on the economy, public health and the environment between 1990 and 2020.

On November 8-10, 2011, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) worked with Vermont Law School to conduct a judicial training in Kunming, China in collaboration with the China University of Political Science and Law, the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, and the Humanities College of Southwest University of Forestry located in Kunming. Approximately 30 judges from three provinces (Yunnan, Hainan, and Guizhou) participated in the training.

" The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced the release of a new mapping feature in EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. As part of EPA’s ongoing effort to improve transparency, the EPA and State Enforcement Actions Map will allow the public to access federal and state enforcement information in an interactive format and to compare enforcement action information by state.